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BoE's Bailey keen for longer banker bonus deferral

LONDON, April 2 (Reuters) - Britain's top banking supervisor said on Wednesday he wants most of a banker's bonus deferred for longer than the current average of three years.

"I would like to see deferral increased," Andrew Bailey, Bank of England Deputy Governor and chief executive of its Prudential Regulation Authority, told Britain's ITV News.

The current average deferral period is three years, he said, and a parliamentary commission on banking standards has called for deferral of up to a decade.

Bailey said he would probably like a period "somewhere in between", which would suggest five to seven years.

A decade could be too long, he said.

"You've got to balance that against what might be a rather common sense argument about what is the expected length of people's working lives. Frankly, I'm not in the business of deferring for a long time into retirement, and we just need to think about that question," Bailey said.

The central bank is expected to launch a public consultation on deferring bonuses later in the year.